Challenges in the development of Mechatronic systems: The Mechatronic Component

There is a need to replace existing mechanical and electromechanical systems with new ones, where functionality will be mainly implemented by software. The traditional approaches in the development of this kind of systems, which are known as mechatronic systems (MTSs), prove wholly inappropriate for todaypsilas problems that are characterized by complexity, dynamics and uncertainty. In this paper, challenges in the development of MTSs are discussed and the mechatronic component is proposed as the key construct to address these challenges. The means that the construct of mechatronic component addresses the challenges of synergistic integration, size and complexity and reuse are discussed and the infrastructure for a prototype implementation is described.